Posted by
Rich from Paso on Wednesday, August 29, 2007 7:16:08 AM
Within three days we had two of the most surreal examples of our legal system in action.
On Monday, a man that had professed his innocence for months, pled guilty to the crime everyone was almost positive he had done. That man, of course, is Michael Vick. Here you had a extraordinary athletic talent, had the world by the tail, loved by an entire city, throw it all away so some of his buddies could engage in dogfighting, of all things. Michael Vick was (key word here) the richest, most highly paid athlete in the history of the NFL. But the warning signs of Vick's impending fall were evident in the behavior of his brother, Marcus. Marcus was kicked off of the Virginia Tech team for repeated run ins with the law, but mostly for stomping on the leg of a University of Louisville football player and then lying about apologizing for it. Lawlessness, it appears runs in the family. Michael Vick had apparently beat the odds and left the rough and tumble streets of his youth, found fame and fortune in the NFL and had become a roll model for the youth of America. For something as asinine and barbaric as dogfighting, Michael Vick is now going to spend at least one year of his life behind bars and may never play football again. Every sports writer and personality believes that if he had admitted his guilt at the start, he could have avoided jail and saved his career. Instead, Michael Vick chose to lie about his involvement and it cost him everything, including his freedom.
Wednesday, the world was treated to the courtship rituals of gay men in Minneapolis airport restrooms. The man at the center of this discussion apparently solicited gay sex from a police officer in the next stall over. When the man in question was arrested for his lewd conduct, the man in question throws down a business card and proclaims "What do you think of that?" When the cops aren't impressed with his credentials, he immediately pleads guilty to a misdemeanor charge of lewd public conduct.
This was two months ago.
The man in question is of course, Senator Larry Craig (R) from the great state of Idaho (no, he da ho). Senator Craig has been all over TV proclaiming his innocence, even though he pled guilty two months ago. He says he is not gay, which is neither here nor there, except that the police officer goes into thorough detail of all of the actions that Craig took in the restroom. He proclaims his innocence even though it has come to light he was cited for doing actions in a Washington D.C. train station known as a gay man's meeting place. He says that he pled guilt to the charge even though he was innocent because he just wanted to make the charge go away. He wanted it to go away alright. I think that he pled guilty thinking that the papers in Idaho wouldn't learn of his actions in Minnesota.
The real story of Larry Craig is that innocent people in general, and innocent politicians absolutely, do not pled guilty to crimes they haven't committed, especially to actions that are counter to their morality and ethics. There is nothing wrong with being gay... unless you have spent your career politicizing gay issues for political gain. Larry Craig can proclaim his innocence and his heterosexuality all he wants but the voters of Idaho will decide for themselves based on the evidence presented in the court of public opinion. It is very likely that Larry Craig will have plenty of time in 2008, after the voters pick someone else, to decide if he truly is straight or gay. What Senator Craig is going to learn the is that Republicans do not get the benefit of being a hypocrite. Democrats can be theives or gay, or even gay theives and it is not so bad in the public's eyes; they're Democrats afterall and anything goes. But Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and Mark Foley learned the hard way that the public and the media is not so forgiving with Republicans and they learned it with jail time and public humiliation.
It is ironic that within a week, a man that said he was innocent was guilty as hell and was so guilty he became a snitch to get a good deal and another man pleads guilty to embarrassing crimes two months ago and is now saying that he made an error of judgement and has been innocent the whole time.
What strange times we live in indeed.